Get Smart
         
Director: Peter Segal
Year: 2008
Rating: 7.0
Until I saw the credits of this film, I had forgotten that the creators of the classic TV show were Mel Brooks and Buck Henry - two comedy geniuses. Which partly explains why it ran from 1965 to 1970 and has remained popular fifty years later. It still gets over an 8.0 rating on IMDB. Don Adams was wonderful as the bumbling but lovable Agent 86 and there wasn't a man or boy in America who didn't have a crush on Agent 99 played by the dreamy eyed Barbara Feldon. It was a consistently funny parody of the latest craze - super spy films. This film comes along nearly 40 years after the end of the TV show and gets it just right. I am not sure if it appealed mainly to Boomers like me, but so what if that was the case. It was much more amusing than I had expected. There were a number of bits that had me cracking me. They borrow some of the more popular catch phrases from the TV show and the wonderful Cone of Silence, but it is still its own animal and certainly upped the ante in terms of action and the budget from the old show. They could have actually dropped out the goofy comedy and it would have stood as a fine action film. The sky diving scene took weeks to film. But I am glad they didn't.


 
They make a terrific choice in picking Steve Carrell as Maxwell Smart. His years in The Office and other works showed he had the mix of comic instincts and acting chops to pull it off. As Agent 99 Anne Hathaway is a fine choice. Those enormous orbs which we call eyes are alien like but pull you in. And there is the wonderful Alan Arkin as The Chief replacing Edward Platt from the TV show. The filmmakers change the formula around which makes sense. 110-minutes of fumbling. bumbling and pratfalls would have been too much. So, they shift the formula around and make Smart a more competent Renaissance man with good skills and a certain attractiveness.  There are still plenty of moments of idiocy from Smart for sure - the scene in the airplane bathroom in which he tries to free himself from restraints and does himself bodily injury is very funny and painful to watch. I kept yelling out ouch every time he stuck himself. Yes, he bumbles along but also saves the life of the President (James Caan doing a fine George Bush imbecile imitation) and the city of Los Angeles that Siegfried (Terence Stamp - Bernie Koppell in the TV show) wants to blow up with a nuke. And beside him is always Agent 99 with her luminous eyes.

 

It's an origin story - not sure if the TV show ever had one - in which Smart is an analyst who can listen in on conversations practically 24-hours a day of America's enemies and translate them. And make conclusions because they are ordering muffins. He writes lengthy reports that none of the field agents (Dwayne Johnson, Terry Crews, David Koechner) ever read. He wants to be a field agent, but The Chief tells him that he is too valuable as an analyst. Agent 99 has just joined them at Central - after massive surgery to change her looks - when she shows Smart a photo of what she once looked like, I am surprised it wasn't Feldon - and they do not hit it off. Circumstances change and The Chief has to send them both on a mission to save the world. Bill Murray makes a cameo as the man in the tree. Perhaps the highlight of his career. The film did very well at the box office and I am surprised there was no follow-up. It got me to re-watch a few episodes of the TV show for the first time in decades and they hold up wonderfully well.